External Mentor Program: A Pathway to Career Advancement for Women in STEM

Mentor availability helps reduce the barriers facing women, providing skills and confidence necessary to successfully navigate different career stages in academia, and especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) related areas. For example, mentoring was noted to increase women’s persistence in engineering, and presumably other STEM fields (Frehill et al., 2006). Washington State University (WSU) began an External Mentor Program under the National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation award, and because of its success, this program is now sustained internally. Results of the WSU External Mentor Program evaluation (N=40) indicate that participating women faculty in STEM disciplines endorsed high levels of overall satisfaction with the External Mentor Program, reported that their expectations were met, and expressed consensus regarding recommending participation to their colleagues. All but one participant generated external grant proposals after taking part in the External Mentor Program. In-depth follow-up interviews revealed additional benefits, principally falling within the following domains: validation, collaboration, access and networking, and a “trickle down” effect - benefits conferred to the students, and participants’ departments more broadly. We conclude that External Mentor programming has emerged as an important tool in the arsenal of institutional strategies aimed at enhancing retention and advancement of women faculty in STEM fields.